DIFPED

An interesting recent discussion on the eList for ACCIS (Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools) had to do with Board reports, a topic that those of us in independent schools have to think about at this time of year while juggling everything else.  How much information, at what depth of detail, should we share with our Boards about the college admissions year, and how do we educate them about the larger trends and challenges facing our students—and us?

A close friend claims to be a convert to “Zen” presentations, with pictures taking the place of words and minimal text (something you’re unlikely ever to see in this blog).  A year ago his Board report was organized around three sets of iuitials—ED (Early Decision), DI (Demonstrated Interest), and FP (Full Pay).  His argument was that those three concepts explained most of the things taking place in the college admissions world affecting his students.  If he had only been a little less Zen and a little more attuned to acronyms, he could have reorganized into the memorable DI/FP/ED, or “difped.”

The consensus among ACCIS members who replied was that Demonstrated Interest has been a bigger issue this year.  That has been true in cases where highly-qualified applicants end up Wait Listed at selective institutions, and also in some cases where students on the bubble were admitted due to the interest they had shown.  Several counselors reported that colleges seem to be paying closer attention to the “Why here?” essay as a sign that a student has done research and has depth of interest, and that forging a relationship with an admissions officer might pay off with an offer of admission, where failure to connect could result in being Wait Listed even when superbly qualified.

I have come to believe that all those issues (Early Decision, Demonstrated Interest, and the use of Wait Lists) are related.  I also think Demonstrated Interest is no longer the right term.  What we refer to as Demonstrated Interest has become Likelihood to Enroll.  Colleges and universities, especially selective private institutions, are so concerned with admit rate and yield that they are taking likelihood to enroll into consideration in making admissions decisions.

That explains the popularity of Early Decision, where there is in theory a 100% likelihood to enroll, and it also explains why many institutions are using Wait Lists as a kind of “Early Decision 3,” filling a certain percentage of the class (up to 10-15%) off the Wait List where interest becomes a much more important factor than in the regular process.

The change I’ve sensed this year is that the process of demonstrating interest is becoming more complex.  Whereas demonstrating interest used to be something a student only had to do once, whether by visiting the campus or by meeting with a college rep at school, now demonstrating interest is an on-going process.  As colleges attempt to predict who is likely to enroll rather than who is interested, many are looking for multiple contacts, tracking hits on the website or student portal.  I think that interest is an appropriate factor to consider in the admissions process; I just wish that colleges would be transparent to students about what counts as interest and how they measure it.

 

The changing landscape for Demonstrated Interest produces new headaches for counselors trying to advise students interested in coming off a Wait List.  I recently heard about a school where the counseling staff is divided over the issue of whether a student should promise a college she will enroll if admitted off the Wait List.  The student in question is genuinely interested in the college where she is Wait Listed, but is unsure now that May 1 has passed whether she would withdraw from the first college if offered off the Wait List by the second.

One staff member sees the student as breaking a promise if she doesn’t accept the Wait List, while the other argues that the vagaries of the Wait List, especially in a time when colleges are trying to calculate likelihood to enroll, make the student’s ethical obligations far from clear.

I am sympathetic to both positions.  The German philosopher Immanuel Kant describes keeping a promise as the paradigmatic ethical act, in that having made a promise imposes ethical obligations on an individual even if outweighed by competing ethical principles, and I have always advised students that commitments and promises are not to be taken lightly.  At the same time, I don’t see the Wait List case as comparable to reneging on an Early Decision commitment.

The NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice (Section 2.B.6) states that colleges are not allowed to ask Wait List students for a commitment to enroll prior to a written offer of admission.  I haven’t seen colleges ask directly, but have an increasing sense that they would like to have a pretty good idea that a student will accept before making the Wait List offer.  Colleges use Wait Lists to manage enrollment with precision, and they don’t want to make 30 offers to fill 10 spots if they can fill them with only 10 offers.

The other side of the issue is that savvy students, or those with savvy counselors, understand that interest/likelihood to enroll are key parts of the Wait List game, and may commit either implicitly or explicitly to enroll if admitted off the Wait List.  Is it wrong for them to do so if they’re not sure?  Should a counselor encourage or discourage them?

I have always taken the position that honesty and commitment are values to be taken seriously.  If a student tells a college they will enroll if admitted off the Wait List when they have no intention, when they are merely collecting an acceptance, that is wrong.  If, however, a student honestly believes they would likely enroll, communicates that they will come, then chooses to remain at the institution where they have already deposited, I see that as different, as not dishonest.  The college has no right to ask for that commitment, and by not admitting the student originally, in effect telling the student that the college doesn’t really want to admit her (that may be a harsh interpretation of what Wait List signifies), the college has given away its moral bargaining position.  When likelihood to enroll is part of the college’s equation, such that a student communicating that they are interested but not certain of enrolling may preclude an offer being made, any commitment must be considered conditional.

The poet W.H. Auden said that it is easy to promise that you will love someone forever and much harder to promise that you will love them next Tuesday. I tell students that making final decisions is hard because you are no longer talking about possibilities but making choices with real consequences. By choosing one you close the door on others.  A student who promises to enroll prior to being admitted off a Wait List is promising love forever. They can’t be expected to promise they will still feel the love next Tuesday when getting off the Wait List is a reality rather than a possibility.

AP or Not AP--Another Perspective

Shortly after my post last week about whether students taking AP courses should be required to take AP exams, I received a thoughtful e-mail response (much more thoughtful than my post, in fact) from Susan Tree at Westtown School outside Philadelphia.  Susan is someone whose opinion I respect greatly, and I asked her if she would allow me to publish her response.  It is below, followed by a couple of closing thoughts.

 

Hi Jim,

 

I enjoy reading your blogs! Usually, I agree with your insights and feel your pain, but I have to express a contrary opinion on this one! I acknowledge up front that the value of AP courses and exams vary regionally.... in the greater Philadelphia area, the majority of independent schools have dropped the AP designation because it became clear that the value in the college admission process was negligible and it wasn't allowing our curriculum to evolve in this "new" century. And it certainly wasn't helping our high end students differentiate themselves in the applicant pools of selective colleges! Our faculty (after a lot of research including dialoging with professors of first year courses at colleges, from the Ivies to research universities to small liberal arts colleges) knew they could design courses that were more advanced, more 21st Century, and simply better than the AP curriculum.

Our college list is as strong as ever (actually stronger, from my perspective) as a result and we have been able to introduce some exciting, rigorous, advanced course work that takes our students to a higher level of college preparation. Colleges love it. Our kids stand out more in their applicant pools.

 

When we still had the AP designation on courses, we never required students to sit for the exam, believing that the value of taking a rigorous course is in taking the course, not taking the test. We didn't have trouble with kids slacking since these courses were well taught and kids were in it for the learning experience. Things haven't changed.

 

So I appreciate your perspective but it's simply not our experience that AP has gained in value in the college admissions process except at "the nation's weak and failing schools" (to quote George Bush and Gaston Caperton when the audit debuted) which truthfully, are the target audience for the whole AP program. Maybe AP is the gold standard... especially for schools that are under-resourced and whose teachers need a curriculum. I guess there are "platinum" standards too, especially for independent schools charging big bucks. We know that people in greater Philadelphia can go to good public schools and take all the AP courses they want - and many of those kids don't get in to the colleges our students get in to. Parents pay for the "value added", which is what we work hard to articulate, market, and deliver. Lots of student research, collaborative work, action based learning, interdisciplinary work, deep dives...

I think that colleges take each school at face value - and look for whatever it is that they value in an applicant (and what their professors want in their classrooms!). You and I know that applicants are judged in their own unique context. As the 21st Century continues to unfold, I think that AP will move out of well-resourced schools into schools that need to rachet up their teaching and curriculum. Expensive schools like ours will likely be looking at international curricula (and not just IB), research skill development, and interdisciplinary models... and other skills all the 21st Century research points to as critical for this generation. It's exciting.

 

This is ironic giving that I am proctoring the AP Comp Sci exam this morning! As long as we enroll international students, we will be giving AP exams... A few years ago at NACAC (ten, maybe!) I was on a panel called, "To AP or Not AP, That is the Question". Small world!

 

Best to you.

 

-Susan

 

Susan K. Tree

Westtown School, PA

 

And a couple of thoughts:

 

1)       I appreciate Susan’s perspective and her willingness to share it.  My goal in blogging is to stimulate discussion about the ethical issues related to college admission, and I will be the first to admit that I am much better at asking questions than I am at providing answers (my philosophical background at work).

2)      As I was writing the post I had the uneasy sense that I was defending the College Board far more than I planned when I started writing, but while writing the post I somehow convinced myself that when you call a course an AP course, your default position should be that students will take the exam unless there are compelling reasons not to.  I am less certain about that than I once was, and Susan’s reflection on Westtown’s experience makes me even less so, but that’s still my default position.

3)      I hope I didn’t come across as arguing that the AP program is the “gold standard” when it comes to curriculum.  What I was trying to suggest is that the justification for the AP program has changed from college credit to curriculum rigor, and I expect that to increase under David Coleman as the College Board moves to position itself as the leader in assessing the Common Core.  I work in a traditional independent school where the faculty generally likes both AP courses and AP exams, and yet my own sympathies lie with those schools that have moved away from the AP brand in order to design courses that engage students and require them to think deeply.  I suspect Susan is right  that a number of good, wealthy school will become “post-AP” in their curricula to better provide the skills our graduates will need in the 21^st century world.

4)      Susan may be right that the appeal of AP varies depending on geography.  Unlike Philadelphia, the independent schools in Richmond continue to be committed to AP, and yet I have joked with colleagues from other schools that the commitment is for marketing rather than philosophical or educational reasons.  Each school is hesitant to drop AP because of perceived marketing disadvantages, and it would probably require the independent school equivalent of the Camp David Accords to achieve AP disarmament.

5)      I apologize for inadvertently borrowing a title from an old NACAC conference session.  It proves once again that I am neither as clever nor as original as I would like to think.

 

 

I am doing a presentation this weekend on “Surviving the College Admissions Process—and Enjoying It” at the Community Conversation on Teen Stress: Fostering Wellness and Resiliency sponsored by the Superintendent of Schools in Fairfax County, Virginia.  If any of you have thoughts on that topics, feel free to share.

 

On a lighter note, ECA hit two milestones last week.  The blog received its 12000^th view, something I would never have dreamed of when I started writing, and more significantly, received its first view from the last state we were missing, North Dakota.  According to ClustrMaps, we’ve had readers from 63 other countries, but I’m skeptical about how many of them were actually interested in the ethics of college admissions.  Thanks to everyone who reads and comments either publicly or privately on the blog.   

 

AP or Not AP? That is the Question

As we celebrate the annual College Board Festival of Advanced Placement Exams, let us pause for a minute to consider the question, Should students who take AP courses be required to take AP exams? That has never been a simple question, and it is even less so today.

For much of my career my answer would have been a clear “yes,” and in fact my school continues to expect students who take AP courses to take the AP exam (we will not get into the semantics of “expect” vs. “require”).  The classical definition of an AP course is that it is a course designed to prepare a student for the AP exam, which then provides the potential for earning college credit.

But is that definition of an AP course still valid?  Today AP courses have more value for admission to college than for college credit or placement.  AP has become the nation’s top curriculum brand, making the AP syllabus (or at least the AP designation on a transcript) more important than the AP exam.  With AP exams now costing $89 and less likelihood of receiving college credit than used to be the case, is it fair to require students in an AP class to take the exam?

That begs the question, “Fair to whom?”  It may not be fair to the student with financial hardship and little chance of earning credit, but it may be fair to teachers who need every carrot and every stick at their disposal to stave off senior slump at this time of year.  Exams of any type promote accountability, and there is an educational argument to be made that taking an exam has educational value in itself, helping a student to pull together information and make connections between ideas.  Most of my colleagues who teach AP courses are impressed with the quality of the exam, especially now that exams like Biology have moved away from regurgitation of information and toward critical thinking and problem-solving.  Several years ago a Chemistry teacher argued that the AP exam didn’t measure the right things.  I pointed out that you can make that argument when your scores are good, whereas it looks self-serving when your scores are modest.

The question, then, is how essential a component of the AP experience is the exam itself?  Is taking an AP course but not taking the exam the same experience as taking an AP course to prepare for the exam?  My gut tells me it’s not, but that’s not necessarily a reason to require a student to sit for the AP exam.

But what about a student who shows AP courses on his or her transcript but no evidence of having taken an exam? Does that concern or worry colleges?  It is less of an issue today when schools have to get approval to label courses as AP, but without the exam component what’s the difference between a course taught using the AP syllabus and an Honors course? 

Having an AP exam score provides information both about the student and potentially about the course as well.  There is a big difference between having an A in an AP course with a score of 5 on the exam and an A with a 2 on the exam.  Most of us would guess those aren’t equal courses. There are certainly students who don’t test well, but when an entire class scores poorly on the AP exam it may say something about the quality of the class.  When a student’s transcript show AP courses with no evidence of having taken the exam, do colleges assume that the exam wasn’t taken or that the scores weren’t very good?

I have never been described as an apologist for the College Board, which I have labeled “America’s Most Profitable Non-Profit Organization.”  I think the AP curriculum provides rigor and quality, although I also think it may restrict good teachers from delving into topics that are not on the exam.  I also have reservations about the “AP for average students” movement.  That having been said, I think that most students who take AP courses should also take the AP exam, with exceptions made for those for whom the cost of the exam causes financial hardship.

 

ECA Gets a Shoutout

The front page of today’s InsideHigherEd.com features a reference and link to yesterday’s post.  The mention is in the Around the Web section at the bottom of the page.

The Ethical College Admissions blog was previously mentioned by the Washington Post website and by Reuters.com.  In addition, Peter Gow last year listed the blog as among the influential independent school blogs in his blog on Education Week.com.

We are grateful for the coverage and for all those who read the blog.

May Day! May Day!

I just returned from attending the Potomac and Chesapeake ACAC conference.  I did two presentations, and preparing for them has consumed most of my free time over the past several weeks.  That has diverted attention from the blog.  Several years ago Jeannine Lalonde at the University of Virginia, better known as “Dean J” thanks to her Notes From Peabody blog, told me that blogging is addictive, and I have found that to be the case.  After about two weeks without a post I start to panic that: a) I haven’t written anything recently; and b) I have nothing worth saying.  I’m going to try to address the first concern with several shorter posts over the next couple of weeks.  It remains to be seen whether that will prove the second concern right or wrong.

Today is May 1, better known as May Day.  What images May Day conjures up depends on your background.  It may mean dancing around the May Pole, Cold War-era Soviet bloc parades of military might, or the international distress call.  For all of us in the college admissions/college counseling profession May Day means only one thing, the Day of Reckoning that is the National Candidates Reply Date.  By the end of the day today high school seniors should have one and only one deposit in at a college, and college admissions offices should have a good idea about what their class looks like.  May 1 is not final, because there will still be movement on and off Wait Lists, but today marks a ceremonial and realistic conclusion to the admissions year.

May 1 assumes even greater importance for those of us concerned about the ethics of college admissions.  I would argue that May 1 is the most important convention that prevents admissions from degenerating into the Wild West, a landscape without law or order.  Having May 1 as a common date protects both students and institutions and keeps us from deteriorating into blatant self-interest at the expense of the common good and a sense of professionalism.

At PCACAC I attended a session titled, “Is It Ethical?” dealing with both the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice and some case studies that illustrate gray areas and the fact that no document is capable of covering every scenario. During the session, Lou Hirsh, retired Director of Admissions at the University of Delaware as well as Chair of the AP committee for PCACAC and a member of the National AP committee (also a friend and devoted reader of this blog), observed that the majority of admissions practices inquiries received at both the regional and national levels are prompted by colleges that ask for deposits (enrollment, scholarship, housing) prior to May 1.  Many (most?)  are not malicious in intent but motivated by self-interest, but asking for a deposit before May 1, even when refundable, has the potential to be coercive, to manipulate a student to make a commitment before they know all their options or are ready to choose among those options.

During the session two interesting things came up.  One was a discussion about whether assigning housing on a first-come, first-served basis is ethical.  The consensus in the room was that it is not, that it disadvantages students who are already economically disadvantaged, those who require financial aid and may have to scramble to come up with an enrollment or housing deposit.  I see both sides of that issue.  On one hand, all things being equal, first-come, first-served is defensible as a “neutral” way to assign housing or other benefits.  Then again, all things aren’t equal. A first-come, first-served process gives further advantage to students who are already advantaged, and first-come, first-served has the potential to manipulate student behavior, even unintentionally. Other means of assigning housing, such as a lottery, are fairer to all students.

The second was a comment from a Director of Admissions.  The essence was that we shouldn’t be surprised if erosion of the May 1 deadline doesn’t eventually lead to an increase in double deposits and an erosion of the idea that there is something inherently wrong with depositing at more than one college.

His comment touched a nerve.  I believe in the sanctity of May 1 and tell my students and parents that double-depositing is unethical, but I also see hypocrisy in college folks who see double depositing as a treasonable offense when so many colleges are violating the spirit of May 1.  When students and parents are led to believe that they will lose opportunities for housing and scholarships if they don’t commit prior to May 1, we can’t be incensed when they hedge their bets with multiple deposits.  The May 1 convention, like so much about college admissions, is an honor system, relying on all of us giving up what’s good for us for the greater good.  That greater good is public trust and confidence in the admissions process and calendar.

On this May 1 I hope we will look at the big picture and pledge ourselves to admissions practices that build trust and confidence.  We must remember and heed the words of Benjamin Franklin, who told the signers of the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.”

Happy May 1.  May this day bring us happy students and full freshman classes, and may the phrase “May Day” signify the coming of spring and not an emergency call for help.   

The Price is Right

I am not good at, nor do I care for, haggling over price.  That may be why I look forward to buying a car the way I look forward to going to the dentist.  I know that I will leave the dealership with a new vehicle but also a clear suspicion that I have been taken advantage of.

There is only one time when I bought a new car that I knew I had gotten a good deal.  It was the end of the month, and the salesman needed to sell a car more than I needed to buy one.  I wasn’t trading in my car, I was focused on the bottom line rather than the monthly payment, and I negotiated to the point where my wife, who is far more a bargain hunter than am I, was kicking me under the table.  Our “final” offers were within $125, at which point I suggested we split the difference, and we made the deal, after which the salesman told me they were ready to let me walk.  What convinced me that I had done a good job, though, was that my sister and her husband had bought the exact same model from the same dealer several months before and paid $1000 more, and I had gotten air conditioning included.

Recently the mother of a senior called to ask whether we had sent transcripts to two colleges.  The answer was no, because we weren’t aware he was applying to those schools.  That in itself wasn’t surprising. Strother Martin’s quote from the movie Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate” certainly applies to many families, and anyone who thinks gender differences aren’t real need only to observe mothers and sons going through the college process together—and separately.  There is a Ph.D dissertation waiting to be written on that subject.

What was surprising was that the son had already told us that he had been accepted and deposited at his first-choice school.  In following up we learned that the parents wanted him to apply to the other schools as a negotiating strategy so they might get more financial aid from the first-choice.  We suspected the strategy was futile, given that the other two institutions were similar in cost and student profile.

I have always discouraged parents from asking for additional financial aid unless there is a compelling change in circumstances. A recent New York Times article, though, suggested that many private colleges give additional aid to more than half the families who appeal their financial aid package.   So is my advice outdated, and what are the ethics and etiquette of appealing financial aid awards in 2014?

The answer, I suspect, is that the landscape is changing similar to other changes in the way college admissions and counseling are conducted.  That’s true for all parties.  I have seen finances be a bigger factor in the final college choices made by my students and their families in the past two years than ever before, and if it’s happening in my population it reflects a much larger trend. 

I saw a statistic several years ago that suggested that college tuitions have risen faster over the past quarter century than health care costs.  Ever since the beginning of my career, 35 years ago, there have been predictions that there is a limit to how high college tuitions can go before the public balks, and it hasn’t happened yet.  But is the template of raising tuition and providing more tuition discounts sustainable? With families taking on more student loan debt, without the guarantee that the investment in higher education will pay off with the kind of jobs that have traditionally been available to graduates, have we reached the threshold where the cost of higher education has exceeded the perceived value of higher education?

A related issue is the psychological impact of the increase in the use of “merit” aid.  Several years ago, one of my students attended an accepted student program at a university he was very interested in attending.  During an information session, he and his parents learned that 90% of the students admitted to the university received merit aid.  Unfortunately he was one of the 10% who didn’t.  His parents returned upset because my office hadn’t secured a merit scholarship for him, something he and they had never identified as important in his search process.  It had become important not because he needed the money, but because he wanted to feel wanted.  How meaningful is “merit” when everyone has it, and at what point do merit scholarships become entitlement scholarships?

My advice against trying to negotiate financial aid offers is predicated on the assumption that the financial aid analysis process is rational and fair, but that train may have left the station long ago.  It is true that any need analysis methodology rewards certain things and penalizes others, but financial aid has become less about need or ability to pay and more about willingness to pay.  Today colleges and universities hire consultants who employ a sophisticated calculus to determine what combination of price points will fill the class and maximize revenue.  In such a business environment is there anything wrong with advising consumers to haggle over price?

I don’t want my students and their families to think that appealing aid offers should be common practice, but there are three circumstances where I think it’s a mistake not to appeal.  A family should appeal if there has been a major change in their financial circumstances since they applied for aid, they are justified in appealing if they have an offer from another institution with a more generous interpretation of their financial need, and if finances are an impediment in a student’s attending his or her first-choice college, I would want the college to know that, understanding that the college may be unable or unwilling to sweeten the aid offer.

I hope that choosing a college never resembles buying a car.  But given the cost of a college education and the fact that student loan debt may impact an individual’s ability to make other important life choices ranging from choosing a career to getting married to buying a house,  price is likely to become a greater consideration.  Bob Barker would be proud.

New and Improved

Each semester I spend a day in my Public Speaking class talking about critical thinking through the lens of advertising claims.  I point out that it is against the law for advertisers to lie, but that they are allowed to make claims that lead us to make incorrect assumptions. 

What advertisers don’t say may be far more meaningful and significant than what they do say.  Back in the 1970s the now-defunct National Airlines was a leading carrier to Florida, and ran ads touting the fact that no other airline flew to Miami/Fort Lauderdale for less than National.  What they didn’t say was that all fares were the same, because the Federal government regulated airline fares. When Folgers coffee claims that it’s “mountain grown,” what isn’t said is that all coffee is in some sense mountain grown (Arabica beans are grown at higher elevations than Robusta beans).  When products like shampoo and toothpaste highlight some special ingredient, what they fail to mention is that their competitors have the same ingredient.

Evaluating advertising claims requires knowing the right question to ask.  When Trident chewing gum reports that 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum (for their patients who chew gum), the logical question is “What would I expect the results to be?”  I would expect 100% of dentists to prefer sugarless, making the statistic not that impressive.  When an actor washing his hair with ten times as much shampoo as needed claims to know that Denorex is working because it tingles, the relevant question is “Do you need your shampoo to tingle?”  When products are “new and improved,” the question becomes, "Is that really an acknowledgement that the old product was flawed?"

I thought about that upon learning a couple of weeks ago that there will be a “new and improved” SAT beginning in 2016.  Within minutes of the announcement, I was being asked what I thought by parents and colleagues, and my answer is that I’m not sure.  I like a lot of what I’ve heard.  I like the idea that the test might be more closely aligned with what students study in high school.  I like abandoning the 2400 scale, because it is still odd every time I hear someone talk about having gotten a 1950 on the test. I like the fact that the SAT will become less a test of stamina now that the Writing section will be optional, and being able to guess your way to success without penalty seems to reflect some back corner of the American Dream.  But I am also by nature a skeptic, especially when it comes to the College Board, and there are still a number of questions to be answered.

Foremost among those questions is whether the changes are motivated by philosophy or economics.  I would like to believe that the changes were in response to the thoughtful work done by the NACAC Commission on Testing, but that seems unlikely given how quickly the College Board was to dismiss and ignore the Commission report.

There is an ongoing internal battle for the soul of the College Board—membership organization or corporate entity, .org or .com?  In recent years the corporate forces seem to be winning the war. 

College Board meetings too often feel like infomercials for College Board products, and when I attended the business meeting at a National Forum several years ago, the treasurer reported a “non-profit” of $95 million, a figure that many businesses would envy.  That wealth, much of it generated by SAT fees, allows the College Board to do a lot of good, but it also leads to suspicion that most College Board decisions are based on how they impact the bottom line.   Is the new test an attempt to better measure the skills and knowledge students need in the 21^st century, a reaction to the fact that the SAT has lost market share to the ACT, or a strategic first step to position the College Board to become the primary provider of assessments of the new Common Core standards (partly written and developed by new College Board President David Coleman)?

Those questions are particularly relevant given the fact that the “new and improved” SAT reverses the miracle ingredient from the last iteration of the SAT, the Writing section.  At the time, the addition of the Writing section seemed designed to keep the University of California system as clients, and almost immediately critics such as MIT’s Les Perelman argued that the 25-minute essay and prompts were lousy measures of a student’s ability to write, especially when the scoring rubric did not penalize a student for writing that the War of 1812 started in 1944.

The other significant piece to the recent announcement is the College Board’s collaboration with Khan Academy to produce free test prep materials.  That seems like a good attempt to reestablish the SAT as a tool for college access rather than a test that measures and rewards privilege.  I have always been a skeptic when it comes to the test-prep industry, believing that it is one of the marketing success stories of our time and that the benefits of test prep are far more modest than generally assumed (but that may be the naïve dinosaur within me speaking), and it bothered me that several media reports about the new SAT took for granted that scoring well on the SAT is purely a function of test prep rather than economic advantage.  Whatever the reality, it hurts the credibility of the College Board and the college admissions profession if it is possible, or perceived to be possible, to game the test and the admissions process.

That leads to the final question.  What does the SAT measure, and is it measuring the right things?  It was originally designed to predict freshman year performance in conjunction with high school grades.  Grade inflation makes such a tool necessary, but studies such as that recently done by former Bates Dean of Admission Bill Hiss on the long-term impact of test optional policies raise questions about how much added predictive value SAT scores provide.   More importantly, neither the SAT, ACT, or any other test adequately measure personal qualities such as motivation, work ethic, and “grit” that may be the best predictors of success.  A test that could measure those would truly qualify as “new and improved.”

May 1 and Housing

A post on the NACAC Exchange a week or so ago caught my eye (of course, they all do).  An independent counselor asked a question about the housing application fees required by many large universities (in this case the University of Florida). 

Two of her clients have just been accepted to Florida.  Immediately after applying they were contacted by the university and urged to submit a non-refundable $25 housing deposit in order to reserve the possibility of on-campus housing, with their place in the housing selection queue determined by the date the deposit was paid. They did so, and are now being asked to pay a non-refundable $175 “Advance Rent Payment” by March 11 to complete the housing contract. Failure to submit by the deadline could result in the students losing their place on the room selection list, and late payment will put them at the bottom of the list.  The families want to wait for their other admissions decisions before deciding whether to enroll in Florida and are wondering how the University can ask for a housing deposit so far in advance of the May 1 reply date. 

The query only received a couple of responses, but they captured both ends of the spectrum of opinion on this issue.  A friend of mine suggested that the university be reported to the regional Admission Practices Committee for possible violation of the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP), while another friend responded that this is standard operating procedure at large universities and that they have a legitimate need to manage the complex process of assigning housing.

It can certainly be argued that this is neither an ethical issue nor an issue related to college admissions, but readers of this blog know that has never stopped us from weighing in, so let’s try to sort through the issues.

Does the SPGP apply to housing deposits?  I certainly remember the issue coming up during my time as a NACAC Assembly Delegate.  The May 1 Candidates’ Reply Date is one of the ethical foundations of our profession, a convention designed to protect the ethical principle that students should be able to make a college choice freely and without coercion, knowing all of their options.  But do colleges have a need and a right to ask for commitments and deposits prior to May 1 for things like scholarships and housing?  On one hand, membership in NACAC is institutional, such that a college or university, not just the admissions office, agrees to abide by the SPGP.  On the other, the reality is that in large institutions, things like housing fall outside the purview of the admissions office, and the housing process is sufficiently complex that it may not match up with the admissions calendar.

ACUHO (Association of College and University Housing Officers) does not address deadlines and fees in its code of ethics, other than stating that housing fees should not be used as a revenue stream for parts of the university unrelated to housing (it is presumably okay for a university housing office to use fees to help balance its own budget).  The two documents have a markedly different tone, with the ACUHO document broad and general and the SPGP specific and prescriptive.  The difference is predicated on the fact that NACAC is one of only a few professional associations that attempt to enforce ethical standards.  As a result the SPGP tends to be amended in response to specific practices that push the boundaries of accepted ethical professional practice.  

There are two references to housing in the SPGP, both Mandatory Practices.  Section II. A. 1 mentions housing in conjunction with a requirement for transparency in requirements, deadlines, and refund procedures.  I think the University of Florida is clearly in compliance on this point.

The other mention is in Section II. B. 5, which requires post-secondary members to “work with their institutions’ senior administrative offices to ensure that financial aid and housing options are not used to manipulate commitments prior to May 1.”  That speaks to the heart of the concerns raised by the independent counselor and her clients.  Are the housing deposits coercive, either directly or indirectly?

The $25 fee seems perfectly reasonable, both in timing and amount.  It is akin to the admissions application fee and serves dual purposes, covering the cost of processing the application for housing and also establishing an order for housing selection.

The $175 “Advance Rent Payment” is more problematic, on several fronts.  Both the more substantial financial commitment and the early (pre-May 1) deadline could (emphasis on could) be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate an enrollment commitment, as does the threat to lose one’s place in the housing queue if the payment is late.  Let me be clear that I am not accusing the university of doing anything deliberately manipulative.  For all I know there may be good reasons why the housing office needs to know who actually plans to enroll in university housing prior to May 1.  I also know that it is not unheard of for bureaucrats to establish deadlines and procedures that meet their needs without being aware of how they inconvenience others.  I’m sure there are housing administrators with no clue that a student might apply to more than one college. 

What is most questionable ethically is the non-refundable nature of the deposit.  That is not equally true for all segments of the applicant pool.  If Florida is my first choice and there’s no question that I will enroll (which may be true for a large number of applicants at any flagship university), neither the deadline nor the fee is unreasonable.  If I voluntarily make an enrollment deposit to an institution in February or March, I don’t have a right to expect a refund if I change my mind before May 1 (if I make early deposit because I have been led to believe that will give me a better housing option, that’s different).

For other segments the deadline and non-refundable nature of the fee are indefensible.  The fee is to complete the housing contract, and the use of the word “contract” implies that the student will receive housing.  If I pay the fee and then decide not to attend Florida, I should receive a refund because I am not receiving the benefit.  The same is true if the university is unable to offer me housing.  If I decide to attend Florida and pay the fee but later decide I want to live off-campus, it’s not as clear that the university has any obligation.

The University of Florida housing office does have an appeal process in place for students who want to be released from the housing contract they have signed.  In the case of those who have been asked to pay the $175 fee prior to May 1 to complete the housing contract, they shouldn’t have to ask.  If the earlier deadline is necessary, then the fee should be refunded to any student who doesn’t end up attending the university.       

Deja Vu All Over Again

“It’s like déjà vu all over again.”  That is not only my favorite quote from the renowned American philosopher Yogi Berra (followed closely by “You can observe a lot just by watching” and “If you come to a fork in the road, take it”), but also my reaction when I learned that a senior admissions officer at Flagler College has stepped down after admitting to manipulating admissions data between 2010 and 2013.

Yes, once again we have a college or university admitting that its admissions statistics are inflated.  The list of miscreants—Claremont McKenna, Emory, GW, Bucknell, Mary Hardin-Baylor—reads like a list of battles from the Civil or Revolutionary Wars, and in fact it is difficult to know whether they are isolated incidents (well, not that isolated) or battles in a war for the soul of college admissions—business vs. profession, education vs. marketing/branding, good vs. evil (that might be overly dramatic).

I have posted on this topic several times before, and worry even more than usual that I will repeat myself, but the news connects to several issues I’ve been thinking about lately.

First of all, I’m sad to see another senior member of our profession forced to step down in disgrace, even as I recognize that misconduct by any of us reflects badly on all of us and damages the trust and credibility that is at the heart of our ability to serve the public good effectively.  I don’t know Marc Williar, the Flagler VP who stepped down, but after more than twenty years of service to Flagler and our profession, I hate to see his service end suddenly and ignominiously.

It makes me worry about the future of our profession.  After my last post, remembering the late Fred Hargadon, a regular correspondent wrote that admission deans like Fred Hargadon and Charlie Deacon at Georgetown (mercifully still with us) are an endangered species, that the generation of admissions officers to follow will not have the admissions-as- counseling mindset or the institutional support to practice student-centered college admissions that many of us entered the profession believing in. 

Several years ago I was contacted by a search consultant looking to fill the Admissions Dean position at a college I know well.  I happened to recommend the person who ultimately got the job, but in the course of the conversation the consultant asked if I knew of younger admissions professionals ready to step up to being a Dean or VP.  I responded that I knew a number of young professionals who were very good Assistant Deans, but I wasn’t sure they would make great Deans.  Among my friends who are independent school counselors, I have often wondered if the next generation will be as committed/neurotic about the job as our schools have counted on us being.

Of course, that may be a concern that every generation has about succeeding generations (and therefore further confirmation that I have become old and crotchety).  I’m guessing that plenty of folks had their doubts about me (and may still). And while I worry about the ethical common ground within our profession suffering from erosion in future generations, the reality is that those who have been guilty of falsifying data have been experienced professionals who are my peers.

That raises the question, How and why does this occur?  The easy answer is to place blame on the rogue admissions officer who manipulates data to make his institution and himself look better, and Mark Williar at Flagler accepted full responsibility in an interview with the St. Augustine Record.  I suspect the truth is more nuanced.

In the Flagler case, as in most of the other cases, the manipulation occurred in response to a one-year drop in profile numbers, specifically SAT scores, in the midst of long-term improvement.  We know there is intense pressure on admissions offices to increase applications, raise SAT scores, increase diversity, and lower the discount rate, all at the same time. Being successful just raises expectations.  Is it any wonder that an individual would buckle under the pressure and fudge the numbers in response?  The most insidious part of the “business-fication” college admissions is the assumption that if you’re not improving, you’re falling behind. Does a ten-point decrease in average SAT score really mean that an institution is markedly different? At what point is a drop in numbers truly meaningful?  Metrics are supposed to help measure progress in achieving goals, not become the goals.

I don’t know Flagler well (but am aware that the founder had connections to Richmond), but for many years it has been one of a handful of colleges and universities that claimed to have an acceptance rate much lower than I would have expected.  In 1992 Flagler reported to U.S. News an acceptance rate of 31%, lower that year than MIT, Duke, and Penn, among others. What raised eyebrows was that its average SAT scores were 300-400 points lower than other institutions with similarly low acceptance rates. That didn’t add up.  Either Flagler was an incredibly unique institution or it was playing games to keep the acceptance rate low.  I have had other counselors describe some of those games, but I won’t comment given that I have no personal knowledge. 

If I, a casual reader of the U.S. News rankings, noticed that disconnect, it makes me wonder why the folks at U.S. News didn’t pick up on it.  That leads to my final point.  The federal government is currently trying to develop a rankings-like system to evaluate colleges and universities in areas such as access, affordability, and outcomes.  I will devote a subsequent post to PIRS (Postsecondary Institution Ratings System), but two weeks ago the U.S. Department of Education hosted a technical symposium inviting experts to weigh in on what metrics the new “rankings” should include.  One of those experts was Bob Morse of U.S. News, described in a Washington Post article as the “guru of college rankings.”  Morse urged the government to ensure that colleges do not misreport data.  Perhaps U.S. News will share its verification system, given that it always responds to revelations of data misrepresentation expressing confidence that the misrepresentation is isolated and not common practice.  That confidence is at odds with a survey of admissions directors conducted by Inside Higher Ed.  That survey indicated that 90% believe that other institutions misrepresent data, and only 7% believe that those who rank have reliable systems in place to prevent falsifying data.

On this issue, I’ve had enough “déjà vu all over again.”

Reuters

One of my goals for the second year of this blog was to intersperse some shorter posts among my usual long-winded (800-1200 word) entries.  It was an admirable goal, but up to now unachievable.  If anything my posts have become longer.  So here’s a change of pace.

On Monday ECA was mentioned, and I was quoted, in a column by Liz Weston on Reuters.com.  Her column had to do with need-aware admission, and I believe she had seen my blog post regarding George Washington University’s admission that it is need-aware that was reprinted by Valerie Strauss in her “Answer Sheet” column in the Washington Post  back in October.

Splitting Hairs

Learning of the death of legendary former Stanford and Princeton Dean of Admissions Fred Hargadon made me think back to my one conversation with him, shortly before the end of his tenure as Princeton.  We sat next to each other at lunch at a conference, and he reflected on what the public didn’t understand about selective college admissions.

“Anyone who thinks we’re doing anything other than splitting hairs has no clue,” he observed.  “I can spend an entire afternoon in committee, ultimately admitting four of fifty applicants, and the next morning I can’t remember why we picked the four we did, because the others look just as good.”

He also talked about how being an admissions dean at a place like Stanford or Princeton had gotten more complicated.  At Stanford he had the flexibility to admit a deserving kid who had gotten shut out of acceptances to an Ivy caliber school.  That was no longer possible at Princeton, due to increases in application numbers and selectivity.

There is even more hair-splitting and less flexibility today, when admission rates have dropped to single digits, as cold and unpleasant as the temperatures in last week’s “Arctic Vortex”.  The increased number of applications and competition for admission to the most selective schools also increases the likelihood that kids with stellar credentials will find themselves, in the words of Vanderbilt Dean of Admissions Doug Christiansen, “superbly qualified but not competitive.”

Is that a good thing?  It depends on whom you ask (my friend Chris Gruber at Davidson says that “It depends” is the proper answer to any question about college admissions). It’s certainly good for colleges, as having a scarcity of invitations to “join the club” has proven a brilliant marketing strategy. Mirroring the economy as a whole, among colleges and universities the gap between the 1% and the 99% is widening.  Higher education writers can phone in right now their stories for April about how the Ivies and near-Ivies have had record admission years.

It is not as good for college counselors on the secondary side, especially those of us in independent schools where the marketing strategy, sometimes overt and sometimes subtle, is the promise of “better” college options.  I used to have a good sense of what an Ivy League candidate looked like; not any more. 

Earlier this week my public speaking students turned in their list of colleges for the informative speech I use as a way to get them to think about and research the things that are unique and distinctive about a college’s personality and culture.  The lists were ambitious, and I found myself conflicted, excited to see them setting their sights high but also wondering how many will end up disappointed by the realities of selective admissions.  I also wonder how it will change my job as my career winds down.  Will I be pressured to become a strategist rather than a counselor?  Will I be the college counseling equivalent of Jimmy Carter explaining why $1 per gallon gasoline is a thing of the past?  Will it shorten my career, and will I have any say in that?

And what about the impact on the public?  While it is true that many highly selective institutions are private and have the right to admit whomever they choose, there is also an implied social contract that higher education has with students and parents. That contract promises that a college education is a pathway to the American Dream, serving the public interest, and that investing in a college education will pay off with economic success and personal happiness.   If college graduates, especially those who have gone into debt, find that their degrees don’t lead to employment, trust in the system is eroded.  Trust will also be eroded if the other promise contained in the contract, that students will find an appropriate fit, is no longer true at the top end.

Today admissions committees at highly-selective institutions are splitting hairs even more finely than in Fred Hargadon’s day, with many admitting that they could fill their freshman class three times over with qualified candidates. The application numbers provide immunity to criticism and also allow institutions to engineer a class that meets numerous and complex institutional goals.  But does splitting hairs produce a better educational environment, and is it a good use of admission officers’ time and energy?

Today many college counselors compare earning admission to a highly-selective college or university to winning the lottery. More than 25 years ago, in my first published article dealing with college admissions, I took the lottery analogy one step further.  I argued in a Chronicle of Higher Education back-page op-ed that selective colleges should admit their freshman classes using random selection from among the pool of candidates identified as qualified for admission.  My premise was that selective admission is an example of distributive justice, where the ethical imperative is finding a fair means of distributing a scarce good or service.  Rather than splitting hairs, making fine distinctions among highly-qualified applicants, admissions committees should determine which candidates are qualified for admission, then award places randomly from among all those who are deemed qualified.

You will not be surprised that it was an idea whose time had not (and has not) come.  The article garnered lots of attention, including being republished in the Parents League of New York Review and a textbook of rhetoric and logic (I couldn’t figure out if it was seen as an example of good or bad logic).  It was reported to me that my name taken in vain in admissions offices across the nation, referred to in terms beginning with “ass” and ending with “hole.”  Most interesting was the fact that the Chronicle received several letters from students who wanted to believe that they had been admitted to the Ivy League because they were better and more deserving, not because they were fortunate and even lucky.

I am not foolish enough to make the same argument today.  I understand the argument for admissions officers having the professional expertise to measure merit and predict potential among similar candidates, and would make that same argument if I worked on the admissions side, but the truth is that I don’t really believe I could split hairs in a way that’s meaningful rather than arbitrary.  I understand that selectivity and social engineering is in the self-interest of institutions, but given the increase in application numbers without corresponding increase in staff,  I wonder whether the current system produces better results, better classes, than random selection.  I doubt we’ll ever find out.

Ethics and Self-interest

Soon after I assumed my duties at St. Christopher’s nearly 25 years ago, I received a call from the Dean of Admissions at one of the colleges most sought after by our students.  He called with congratulations and a request.  “Can you please do something about that ranking system?” (There may have been an unprintable adjective before “ranking system.”)

“That ranking system” was the way my predecessor calculated class rank, back in the days before many schools stopped officially ranking.  As I recall, he calculated GPA out to two decimal places, deemed any students with GPA’s within .05 as being tied, and did a kind of creative accounting for the first fifteen ranks in the class where if three students were tied for first in the class, the next highest GPA was ranked not #4, but #2.  The great benefit of the ranking system was that it resulted in 75% of seniors being ranked in the top half of the class.

I am not passing judgment on my predecessor, especially because I later discovered that the same ranking system was used by the National French Exam, which explained why so many of my students scored in the top ten in the state.  He was trying to balance accuracy with putting students in the best light for college admission.  Those are treacherous ethical waters to try to navigate, and all of us who work in schools need to be vigilant that we are not focusing on the second at the expense of the first, lest we fall into the same trap that snared colleges misrepresenting admissions statistics.

I thought about that in light of my last post, dealing with schools and school systems changing their grading scale.  The hidden (and perhaps unexamined) assumption is that changing to a ten-point grading scale will put more students in the best light and pay off in better college admissions results.  But is that the case?

Following publication of the last post, I received an interesting e-mail from a colleague who works in a prominent school system which has recently moved to the ten-point grading scale.  Here are some early results from the change:

            --The GPA’s for top of the class students have moved from 4.25 to 4.5;

            --Because of that jump having a 4.0 GPA is not as impressive as parents and students assume.  Some high schools have 30% of seniors with GPA’s above 4.0, and it is now possible to have a weighted 4.0 without a single A on the transcript.  An annual rite of spring is complaints from parents and media reports about students with a 4.0 GPA who are turned down by the leading state public universities;

            --There is a widening GPA gap between AP/IB/Honors students and those in standard level courses;

            --There is a slight increase in the number of students choosing to take an Honors class rather than an AP course when both options are available;

            --There has been no significant change in the numbers of students accepted at most colleges.

The colleague observed that when the school system was considering making the change, none of the school districts it contacted would share how changing the grading scale had impacted either college admission or scholarship results, and yet that was the big public selling point for making the change.

 

Another regular reader/correspondent made the point that those who push for changing grading scales are usually motivated primarily by what will benefit them (or their children).  Acting in your own best interest is an ethical theory known as ethical egoism.  Ethical egoism is based on psychological egoism, the view that humans are capable of acting only out of self-interest, but there are enough examples of altruistic behavior to question whether acting in self-interest is inevitable.  Of course, as I’ll discuss in a minute, there is a larger question to be asked about whether acting in one’s self-interest in consistent with ethical behavior as most of us understand it.

Ethical egoism is a consequentialist theory, in that an individual should determine what the right thing to do is in a given case by calculating the consequences.  The most widely-accepted ethical theory, utilitarianism, is also a consequentialist theory.  Ethical egoism is simpler, in that all you have to calculate what is good for you, whereas utilitarianism tries to calculate what produces the maximum amount of good for everyone.  The problems with consequentialist theories include how you define good.  Many philosophers equate good with happiness, leading to the objection that there are lots of things that make us happy that aren’t good for us.  The other problem with consequentialism is the Law of Unintended Consequences.  We’re not particularly good at anticipating all the consequences of our actions.

The other approach to ethical theory argues that what is right or good is independent of the consequences it produces.  Certainly good acts produce good consequences, but the consequences are good because the act is good, not the other way around.  The best-known advocate of this point of view is the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the example he cites is telling the truth.  Kant argues that telling the truth is a moral imperative even if telling the truth produces bad consequences.  That doesn’t mean that you might not choose to lie because another moral imperative (such as saving innocent lives) outweighs telling the truth in a particular case, but telling the truth is morally right independent of the consequences it produces.

When I was in graduate school one of my professors made reference to my “Kantian tendencies,”  tendencies I wasn’t aware of.  One of my favorite quotes about ethics is supposedly from Kant, “Ethics begins where self-interest ends.”  I say “supposedly” because as NACAC President I used that quote several times.  About a year ago I was giving a speech and decided to look up the exact formulation.  When I googled it I found one result—an article quoting not Kant, but me.  Now I’m wondering if I made it up. In any case I think it’s true to Kant and it captures my view about what is ethical.   

Grades

How can it be that, three hours into my first day after a two week Christmas break (no war on Christmas here, FOX news), I was already ready for a vacation?  It’s certainly not lack of enthusiasm for the job, as I spent time in the office more days than not during the “break.”  It could be age, my default excuse these days for everything that’s wrong with me, or it could be the shock of reverting to my “normal” sleep schedule after a holiday schedule that seems to fit my system much better. 

The most likely explanation is that I returned to school yesterday morning to face the reality that grades are due.  Grading has always been my least favorite part of being a teacher, but I take it seriously even though the course I teach (Public Speaking) is not an academic core course.  I am unwilling to give all A’s like some non-academic courses do.  I would describe my philosophy of grades for my course as “graduate school grading.”  Similar to graduate school, an A should be hard to get and a sign of excellence, a B should be easy to earn, and a C or below should be a sign that the student has gone out of his way to prove to me how little care and energy he has put into my class. I recognize that there is a good bit of subjectivity in giving grades, so I worry about consistency, about treating like cases alike.  I try to grade in comparison both with the other students in the class and also with my Platonic ideal of what a good speech is.

There is an argument to be made that grades can be an impediment to education, and I tell students that if they focus on learning grades will take care of themselves. Nearly 20 years ago I served as chair of the conference planning committee for the Virginia Association of Independent Schools.  During my tenure we brought one of the original “edutainers,” Alfie Kohn, to the conference as keynote speaker soon after publication of his book, Punished by Rewards, in which he argues that giving grades hurts intrinsic motivation and love of learning.

If the goal of being a keynote speaker is being provocative, Kohn was a hit. Many of those attending the conference found his presentation refreshing and inspirational, the best keynote in years.  At the other end of the spectrum, some teachers were so provoked by his message that they suggested that the organization show support for his opposition to rewards by refusing to pay him.  His message about intrinsic motivation struck a chord in me, but I also suspect that love of learning may be developmental, a rest stop on the road to self-actualization. The need for grades may be best explained by psychologists such as Piaget and Maslow.

I’ve found myself thinking about grades more than usual recently.  The public school system in the county where I live is considering changing its grading scale from a six-point scale to a ten-point scale, a change that several other localities in Virginia have recently made.  In addition, I have had recent conversations with colleagues from two good independent schools that are changing their grading scales.

What all three have in common are concerns related to college admission.  One of the independent schools is making the change in response to a state university for which it is a feeder school saying it will no longer admit out-of-state applicants with a GPA below 2.5.  The other school believes that it may be hurting its students because it has less grade inflation than other schools.  And the primary argument for changing public school grading scale is that it puts students at a disadvantage in the college admissions process compared with students with a ten-point scale.

I am skeptical about how much benefit will accrue from changing a grading scale.  The hidden assumption seems to be that changing the scale will produce a rising tide of GPA’s, resulting in greatly improved college admissions results.  That might work for a short time, but over the long run it begins to feel like the academic equivalent of a Ponzi scheme.

That is not the only questionable assumption.  Another is that grades are hard data and purely objective, but grading requires both discretion and judgment, and it is not clear that teachers will not recalibrate what they consider to be an A or a B to fit the new scale.  The grade scale argument also assumes that college admissions officers look at a transcript without taking context into account.  I hope and believe that’s not the case, but I worry that many admissions officer do not have the experience, training, or time to evaluate a student’s academic record.  I know I didn’t as a young admissions officer.  The 10-point scale argument assumes that admissions officers are too busy, too lazy, or concerned about the appearance of the freshman class profile to evaluate a student’s record at a deeper than superficial level.  While in my career I have had the rare admissions officer say things like, “We think all high schools are exactly alike,” I believe those are outliers.    

I have always felt that what’s more important than grade scale is grade distribution, how easy it is to earn a certain grade.  I have seen high schools where a weighted GPA below 4.0 places a student in the bottom half of the class. On the other hand, when I worked in college admissions we had an English Department that took great pride in its low grades.  One member of the department was notorious for stating at the beginning of each semester, “In my class God would get an A.  I would get a B.  For all of you, that leaves…”  He was not known for his impish sense of humor.  After we enrolled the strongest class statistically in the college’s history, there were 390 students enrolled in freshman English, and exactly one student received an A.  The grading scale was a ten-point scale, but it didn’t matter.

I suspect that grades will be part of the college admissions process for some time to come, and that is a good thing, because the alternative is greater reliance on standardized testing.  I hope that we will always consider grades in context.  When my son came to me during his junior year in high school, having transitioned from underachiever to good student, and told me he had gotten a 95 on a test, I responded, “Out of how many?”  That’s probably always a good question when it comes to grades.

 

College Counseling Without a Net

In my previous post I asked if a college counselor should ever try to coerce a student to change his or her college choice.  Do counselors or schools have a responsibility to keep a student from making a bad choice? 

The case in question concerned a school administrator who had stated his belief that the school had a responsibility to convince a new student to renege on a verbal commitment to play lacrosse at a Division One institution because she could do better academically.  I argued that the student’s commitment should be taken seriously and that it is wrong to talk her out of it, especially if the underlying concern is the school’s college list.

The post generated some interesting responses and conversation.  I stand by my analysis and my conclusion in that particular case, but due to the fact that I was more verbose than usual, I’m not sure that I did a good job of discussing the complexities associated with the broader issues. 

I didn’t mean to imply that a college counselor should never express an opinion, as might be inferred from Phil’s comment to the blog itself.  My position is that we must be very careful not to abuse our power and authority as professionals to influence a choice that is the student’s to make.  Not only should the student make the decision because he or she will live with the consequences, but allowing a student to make a choice different than we might choose is a sign of respect and empowerment for the student as a moral agent.

I think Phil is right on target in two respects.  Students need information and advice from a variety of sources, and a counselor is a source that provides not only objective advice but also expertise and perspective.  It is also clear that the term “verbal commitment” from either party in an athletic recruiting context may not have the same meaning that commitment normally does.

A couple of other correspondents raised interesting questions.  Does our advice and approach differ depending on where a student is in the process?  Should we advise a student differently during the list-building process than when they are making a final decision?  Early in the process it’s easy to suggest other options, but the final choice is, well, final.  Are there certain kinds of issues where a counselor’s input is particularly needed?  The issue I find myself addressing more than any other is the issue of size.  My friend Carl Ahlgren argues that boys are drawn to what he calls the “ESPN schools,” universities with big-time athletic programs and strong Greek systems.  That is what they envision when they think about the college experience, and as a result I feel the need to have them consider the experience and value of attending a small liberal-arts college.

Within a couple of days of publishing the last post, I was reminded several times that college counseling is a tightrope walk without a safety net, with every step delicate and perilous.  On the one hand it is our job to support our students in pursuing their dreams, and yet it is also our job to be the voice of reality.  That is complicated in theory and even more complicated in practice.

I returned from Thanksgiving break to learn that one of my students had neglected to tell one of his parents of his decision to apply Early Decision, and the result was predictable.  I had to go into family therapist mode and spent the week trying to get both sides to understand the other and find common ground. When I had finished I was ready for a less stressful assignment, something like negotiating peace in the Middle East.

I also heard from a colleague at another school who had been ordered by the school’s head not to quash students’ dreams by using words like “reach” when discussing college options.  My first boss when I started college counseling believed that a counselor should never tell a student or parent that they might not get in somewhere, because if they in fact didn’t get in it may appear that the counselor wanted that to happen.  The problem with that approach is that it turns us from counselors into cheerleaders.  I see my job as helping students deal with the realities of college admission, and I decided long ago that I believe in reality therapy, that students deserve my best advice and estimate on their chances of admission, making it clear that I’d be glad to be proven wrong when I am not optimistic enough.  It doesn’t happen that often. 

I believe that the college search and application processes are important developmental milestones that mark a student’s growth from adolescence to adulthood.  Talking about college choice as an adult decision implies several things.  One is that there probably won’t be a single, clear, “right” choice.  Each option will have pros and cons, making the decision a complex calculus.  It is also an adult decision in that a student can do everything right and not get what they want, or even, as my children used to say, “really” want (as if “really” wanting something carries additional moral imperative).  To return to an earlier theme, part of respecting a student as an adult is having confidence in them to deal with disappointment and plan as well as dream.

Commitment

Should a college counselor ever try to coerce a student to change his or her college choice?  I dealt with that question several years ago with one of my seniors, an athlete who was getting football interest from the Ivy Leagues.  He had already received likely letters from both Harvard and Princeton when a nationally-ranked Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division 1-A) school began showing interest.

That development raised a minor uproar on campus when it appeared he was leaning to the better football program.  How could he turn down Harvard or Princeton?  A number of self-proclaimed experts doubted that he was tough enough to play Ivy League football, much less for a nationally-prominent program.  Had any of the coaches seen him play?

An assistant coach for the nationally-ranked program told our coach that to play offensive tackle at that level a player needed to be at least 6’6” with quick feet.  “If you’re 6’3” and the toughest guy alive, you can’t play offensive tackle for us.  We have to find guys with the size and athletic ability and it’s our job to make them tough.”

I sat down with the boy to talk through the decision.  Because he was getting a football scholarship, he could get his education for free rather than paying $50,000 a year.  Because he would be red-shirted and spend five years, he would be able to get both a bachelor’s and master’s.  And because of the prominence of the football program in the state, he felt playing there would give him lots of contacts after he graduated.  I was impressed with his thinking.  He was making a thoughtful choice, if not the choice I might have made for him.  And it worked out.  He ended up starting 20 games during his career, played in several bowl games, and got both degrees.

I thought back to that situation after talking with a college counseling friend on my first night in Toronto for the NACAC conference.  He told me that a new student at his school arrived having already committed to play women’s lacrosse at a national-caliber Division 1 school.  Her academic credentials are superb, and an administrator at the school had stated at a faculty meeting that he thought the school had an obligation to convince her to de-commit and look at other, more academic (translation: Ivy League) institutions.  When some at the meeting objected, the administrator claimed he was joking, except that no one thought it was funny (a situation I encounter often after my own attempts at wit).

Whether joking or not, is he right? His comment and this dilemma both raise interesting and important questions about the essence of college counseling.  Is our job to advise our students or guide and direct and even influence their choices?  Does a school or college counselor have a responsibility to keep a student from making a bad choice?

It’s not clear in this case that the student is making a bad decision.  She has verbally committed to a top-notch athletic program, and for an athlete the opportunity to play at a high-level program may be more important than using her athletic ability to gain admission to a highly-selective academic institution with a lower athletic pedigree.  The university in question may not be an Ivy League or comparably-prestigious institution, but it’s a highly-regarded flagship public university where she will be able to get a first-rate education.

It’s also not clear that the administrator is motivated by the student’s best interests rather than what might be the school’s best interests. In an environment where acceptance rates at highly-selective institutions are in the single digits yet constituencies ranging from alumni to prospective parents judge a school by the number of students attending prestigious colleges and universities, it is easy to fall into the unconscious trap of seeing students in terms of their contribution to the school’s college list rather than as individuals with the right to make decisions about their own futures. Recently one of my students decided to apply Early Decision at a national liberal-arts college where I’ve never had a student enroll.  I think it’s a great fit, but I was also careful to admit to him that my enthusiasm for the choice was also selfish.

 Many top students already believe that their hard work is for naught if it doesn’t result in a certain kind of college acceptance, or that they will let their school down by not shooting high in the admissions process.  We need to make sure we don’t subconsciously send the same message.

The administrator has bought into two flawed assumptions, one psychological and the other philosophical.  The psychological assumption is what might be called the “rational person” fallacy.  That is the view that any/every rational/normal person would make the same choice as we would. It’s a powerful myth.  After thirty years of marriage, I’m still trying to convince my wife that there might be more than one right answer for lots of decisions.

The philosophical assumption is one I have addressed in several previous posts.  It is the myth of prestige, the world view that what is important about a college education is the name on the diploma.  According to that world view, no one should turn Harvard down, because it’s Harvard.  The alternative world view states that what is important about a college education is the experience one has in college.  For a student interested in playing a sport in college, the athletic experience, whether level of competition or ability to get playing time, might make one institution a better fit than a more “prestigious” institution.

That clash of world views extends to college counseling.  Is college counseling success measured by results or by process?  I have always come down on the side of process, believing that the results will take care of themselves if the decision process is sound.  I see my job as asking good questions and providing information and insight into the admissions process, not trying to influence the student’s choice.   

The ultimate ethical consideration surrounding the lacrosse player is that she has already made a verbal commitment to a coach and a university.  Many philosophers (most prominently Immanuel Kant) have argued that keeping a promise is the ultimate ethical obligation. While athletic verbal commitments are not binding (and may even employ a different understanding of “commitment”), encouraging a student to break a commitment sends the wrong message on numerous levels.

Adversity

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”  Thomas Paine wrote those words, using the pseudonym Common Sense, in the winter of 1776 during a particularly bleak time in the American struggle for independence, but the quote (with the coeducational addition of “and women’s”) could very easily have come from a college admissions dean or college counselor in the fall of 2013 using the pseudonym Common App.

It’s been an interesting fall in the college admissions world, thanks to the Common Application’s rollout of CA4.  The myriad of technological issues associated with the new CA version has created headaches and increased stress for colleges, counselors, and students.  At the NACAC conference in Toronto I left the session where I had presented to encounter a line running the length of the Convention Center waiting to get into an adjacent room for the next session.  For a moment I was jealous that another session would be more of a draw than mine until I realized that the line was for a session devoted to Common App issues.  

There are a couple of occupational hazards associated with writing about ethics.  There is a fine line between being a moralist, someone concerned only about the behavior of others, and an ethicist, someone concerned about the ethical implications of his or her own behavior.  In addition, it is easy to see the glass as always half empty, to focus only on what is missing or what is flawed.  I am aware that I am prone to both, which is why both as an ethicist and as a college counselor I strive to be an asker of questions rather than a provider of answers.

That being said, I have to admit that I have been generally proud of the way our profession has handled the CA4 fiasco (I don’t think that’s too strong a word) this fall.  If it is true that the measure of an individual’s character is how one deals with adversity, it is also true for corporate entities such as professions.  We show our true colors in tough times, and this fall we have largely kept our exasperation to ourselves, kept the sniping and finger-pointing to a minimum, and kept our focus on how to make the best of a bad situation.  That’s stoic at worst, and heroic at best.

If we need any excuse to pat ourselves on the back, all we need to do is look at the parallel universe inhabited by the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.  The similarities between CA4 and Healthcare.gov have been striking, with both being hyped, “new and improved” product launches that have demonstrated the limitations and even dangers of reliance on technology.  I can’t be the only one who has joked about both being designed by the same IT people. 

But whereas the incompetent rollout of Obamacare has been made worse by those who have done their best to sabotage implementation by filibustering, defunding, and making political hay out of the problems,  most of us have bitten our tongues, trusted that the folks running Common App were trying their best to make it work, and focused on helping students navigate the new system.  A number of colleges extended early deadlines (which they should have, following the ethical principle that you shouldn’t punish someone for something they can’t control).  To my knowledge, no one in our profession has called for closing down the college admissions process because of concerns about CA4.  Of course, being more functional and professional than Congress is a low bar to clear and not much to be proud about.

What are the bigger lessons to learn from CA4?  One is that “new and improved” technology may be new, but it’s not necessarily improved.  Technology makes our lives easier—except when it doesn’t.  We take the benefits of technology for granted, but the launch of both CA4 and Healthcare.gov show the importance of having an infrastructure in place that has been fully tested and vetted.

On a related note, this fall has been a psychological boost for those of us who are slow to adopt the latest technology.  My office went into the fall intending to move to electronic submission of school documents, but decided we weren’t ready to pull the trigger until some internal issues were resolved.  Within a couple of weeks our decision to submit using paper had moved us from “behind the times” to “cutting edge.”

The larger question is whether power over the college admissions process is being concentrated in the hands of the few.  Common App, the College Board, and Naviance are an oligarchy with enormous control over the college application process.  Is that desirable?  None of them are evil--well, maybe the College Board (A JOKE!)—but does having power in the hands of a few vendors and corporations/membership organizations serve the public?  Eric Hoover has a fascinating article on the growth of the Common App to over 500 members in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education.

The problems with the Common App this fall also should lead us to revisit the question that should always be on our mind when we design the application process.  What are we trying to accomplish?  Are changes in deadlines and requirements driven by convenience for us or because they make the process better for students?  Does the college admissions calendar and process encourage students to make thoughtful decisions about their futures?  The Common Application was originally designed to make it easier for students to apply to multiple colleges, but have we made it too easy?  Does Common App lead students to apply to more schools?  Has Common App become a brand, a means for colleges to increase application numbers, rather than a tool to benefit students?  Is applying to college a Goldilocks process, neither too easy nor too hard?

 

P.S.  In my previous post I made a reference to “games played in the name of enrollment management.”  Shortly after I published it, I received an e-mail from Jon Boeckenstedt at DePaul objecting to my generalizing about enrollment management as if must be associated with questionable practices.  It is a point that Jon (whom I respect greatly) has made in his own writing, and he’s right.  Enrollment management is a neutral concept, a positive force for colleges and universities, and the kinds of games I was objecting to are products of forces independent from enrollment management. I thank Jon for calling me out privately and gracefully, and apologize for the broad-brush portrayal.  My larger point was that all of us are hurt whenever any of us engage in practices that damage public trust in what we do, and my generalization might prove that point.    

 

Mystique

Ethical College Admissions makes the big time!  Last Friday Washington Post reporter Valerie Strauss republished last week’s ECA post on George Washington University’s announcement that it is need-aware, not need-blind in the Post’s “The Answer Sheet” blog .  Here’s the link.

A couple of hours later I received a call from the reporter who originally broke the story about the “changed” policy for The Hatchet, the GW student newspaper.  He wanted to interview me for a follow-up story he was writing.  I felt my defense mechanisms kicking in.   My interactions with reporters have been positive, but I had been told that someone associated with GW felt they had been misquoted, and my inner PR consultant voice was sending me a continuous loop of warnings and questions: “Be careful”; “What is the reporter’s angle?”; “Stay on message”; “Danger, Will Robinson!” (for those of you too young to remember, that’s a catchphrase from the 1960’s TV show, “Lost in Space”); and above all “Will I sound stupid?”  I had nothing to worry about.  When the article appeared on Monday it was well-written and captured my observations accurately.

What was interesting about the interview was that it morphed from dealing with GW’s need-aware policy alone to talking more about selective admission issues.  I argued that the problem was not GW’s being need-aware, which as far as I can tell falls in the mainstream of accepted practice, but in claiming to be need-blind when it was not.

At one point the reporter mentioned that the need-aware revelations had led several high school friends to conclude that financial need must have been why they were Wait Listed at GW.  He then asked if there were other reasons that a student might be Wait Listed, and it became clear to me that the bigger underlying issue is that there is a disconnect between the public’s understanding of how college admissions works and the realities of selective, holistic admissions as practiced by colleges.

At the same time that the GW story came out, I found another example of that disconnect.  A couple of weeks ago the online publication Baltimore Fishbowl ran a story with the title, “Is the Ivy League Out of Reach for Most Baltimore Students?”  Those of us who work in college admissions and college counseling understand that a similar article could be written for any city in the country with a simple answer—Yes.

The article was listed as a “Sponsored Post,” which I interpret as a euphemism for “infomercial” (I think the correct print journalism term is “advertorial.”)  The gist of the article was that Baltimore lags behind other parts of the country, including D.C., in Ivy League acceptances due to a dearth of “excellent SAT tutors, subject tutors, and private admissions consultants.”  The article further argued that test scores make up two-thirds of a student’s academic profile at the Ivies and that the best test prep consultants achieve an average “300-350 point increase on the SAT.”  It was also clear in the article that the target audience for the article was parents who send their children to independent schools where they already receive first-rate college counseling.

It was no surprise to see that the author of the article was someone who is in the “high-end standardized test prep” and tutoring business.  What was surprising were several comments from readers expressing gratitude to have such deep insight into the inner workings of the admissions process.  And when the college counselor at one of Baltimore’s leading schools (who happens to be a friend) responded with a comment pointing out the flaws in the article, he was attacked, perhaps even trolled.

I’m not particularly interested in addressing the claims in the Baltimore Fishbowl article.  The author explained the claim about test scores being two-thirds of the academic profile by referring to the Academic Index used for athletic admissions at the Ivies, but that is misleading at best and wrong at worst when generalized to Ivy League admissions as a whole.  The claim of a 300-350 point increase is higher than any I have ever seen, and I’d love to see evidence that supports it.  The test-prep industry is one of the marketing success stories of our time, but the value of test prep is a prime example of what I refer to as admissions “Suburban Legends.”  Like urban legends, they sound plausible, and you’ve heard that someone’s sister’s co-worker’s child got into Harvard because of test prep (or some other strategy), but proof, either pro or con, is hard to pin down.

For me, the broader issue in both the examples referenced above is whether we are doing a good enough job of communicating how college admission works and what is and is not important.

Among the biggest changes during my 35 years in this profession is public interest in and attention to the college admissions process.  When I began working in college admissions in the late 1970s, none of my friend or relatives understood exactly what I did or even that such a job existed.  That is no longer the case.  Major publications regularly feature articles devoted to college admission, and the local Barnes and Noble devotes an entire shelf to college guides, a shelf almost as large as the True Crime section.  A couple of years ago the Chronicle of Higher Education described college admission as having “mystique.”

The increased attention given to the college admissions process is a dual-edged sword.  It is good to have the importance of what we do validated, but the public interest increases the hype and anxiety that are already too much of the process, and preying on the anxiety felt by parents and students has become a billion-dollar growth industry.

So are we comfortable with the veil that covers college admission?  It is easy to blame the media, but what the public needs to know is not the same thing as what the public wants to know.  The bigger question is whether colleges really want the public to understand how much of a business higher education has become, the games played in the name of enrollment management, or how subjective holistic admission is?  Are we confident and secure enough in what we do to “preach what we practice”?  Would we rather have “mystique,” or would we rather have public confidence and trust?       

George Washington (the University, not the President)

Legend has it that George Washington (the President, not the University) could not tell a lie.  That legend dates back to his reputedly owning up to chopping down a cherry tree with a hatchet. 

I learned at an early age not to question that “truth.”  In elementary school I wrote a poem, intended to be humorous, about George Washington (the President, not the University) and the aforementioned cherry tree.  I wrote it from the point of view of a boyhood chum of George Washington (the President, not the University) who was an eyewitness to the demise of the cherry tree.  In the final stanza of the poem the future President is asked about chopping down the tree and responds by pointing at the narrator, “He did it.”

The poem was selected for the school literary magazine, perhaps my first ever published piece.  When the magazine came out, I was shocked to see that the final line of the poem now read, “I did it,” which not only removed any hint of whimsy and irony, but changed the entire meaning of the poem.  Upon further investigation, it turned out that I was a victim of censorship.  In typing the copy for the literary magazine, the school secretary took it upon herself to change the line so as not to sully the reputation of the father of our country.  For all I know I may have an FBI file based on having written that poem.

On Monday we learned that George Washington (the University, not the President) doesn’t have that much in common with George Washington (the President, not the University).  GW (the University) is not only capable of telling a lie, but has apparently been lying for years about being need-blind in admission.

That revelation came in a story in the ironically-named independent student newspaper The Hatchet.  In the article, Laurie Koehler, the university’s new Senior Associate Provost for Enrollment Management, described the University’s policy as need-aware and acknowledged that was not a change in policy.  That raised eyebrows, because for years (and in fact up until Saturday night) GW had claimed to be need-blind.

There is an old saying in higher education that any publicity is good publicity.  George Washington (the university, not the President) may be about to find out how true that is. This is the second time in the past year that GW had gotten negative admissions-related publicity.  Last November, U.S. News and World Report moved GW into the “Unranked” category (in essence a class by itself) after learning that GW had misreported class rank data for entering students.  That story resulted in Koehler’s predecessor retiring last December.

I have written about the ethics of need-blind admission previously.  Nearly twenty years ago my first article for the Journal of College Admission was on that topic, and one of my first blog posts last year dealt with need-blind admission.  Here are a couple of quick thoughts about George Washington (the University, not the President) and about need-blind/need-aware.

The positive outcome of this story is that GW is now being transparent about its practices.  When the NACAC Assembly first debated the need-blind issue twenty years ago in Pittsburgh, I argued that transparency was the most important and relevant ethical principle, and I continue to believe that.  The cynical part of my being (which friends and colleagues would say is a pretty big part) says that it is easy to come clean when you can place the blame for misrepresentation on your predecessor, and I also wonder about the fact that until sometime this weekend the GW website apparently was still using language indicating that it was need-blind.  Be that as it may, what’s important is that GW is now accurately reflecting what it does.

It is important to stipulate that there is nothing inherently wrong with need-aware admission, especially when practiced at the margin.  Need-blind admission is an ideal that very few institutions can realistically achieve.  Good ethical principles and policies should balance ideals and reality, and the reality is that higher education is at some level a business (I hope it’s more than that), with revenue and expenses a concern.

That doesn’t mean that all need-aware admission practices are equally defensible.  Giving an opportunity to a student with low or no need is more defensible (assuming the student is reasonably capable of being successful) than denying opportunity to a student because they have financial need.      

Twenty-five years ago need-blind admission was understood to incorporate two different principles.  One was that admission decisions should be made without regard to financial need.  The other was that institutions should meet the full need of every student.  I see an ethical difference between the two.  In ethics there is a distinction between acts that are obligatory/ethical duties and those that go beyond the call of duty.  I consider making admission decisions based on qualifications an ethical obligation, while providing funding morally praiseworthy but beyond the call of duty.  I appreciate the argument that says that providing opportunity without adequate financial resources is cruel, but denying opportunity altogether is worse.  One is unpleasant, the other unethical.  What is worse than either of those is denying opportunity to protect stats like admit rate and yield.

What is wrong in the GW case is not being need-aware, but pretending to be need-blind.  I can only guess that’s because need-blind is seen as being prestigious.  Doing things for prestige reasons is usually a bad idea.  I remember a college adding an essay to its application years ago and admitting that it had no intention of reading the essays, but thought that having an essay would make it appear more prestigious.  Just recounting that makes my blood all over again.  A good rule of thumb is that if you’re embarrassed or hesitant to “preach what you practice,” that might be telling you something.

Finally, the need-blind issue is a great example of the changing admissions landscape.  Usually the term “changing admissions landscape” implies an erosion of ethical standards, but I don’t think that’s the case here.  The financial realities of higher education require us to rethink what is important and why.  The enduring values here are honesty and transparency, and whenever any of us fail to live those values, it hurts all of us.

First Monday in October

Last Monday was the first Monday in October, the day each fall that the United States Supreme Court begins its term.  Last year at this time there was great anticipation in the college admissions world as the Court had on its docket a major affirmative action case, Fisher v. Texas. 

This year the Court will hear another case related to affirmative action, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.  Unlike Fisher, though, that case doesn’t have to do with affirmative action itself, but rather the constitutionality of a state (in this case Michigan) amending its constitution to prohibit race- or sex-based discrimination or preferential treatment in public university admissions when other forms of preferential treatment (such as legacy status) aren’t prohibited.  The oral arguments for that case are today, and I’ll post later in the week if I see any interesting admissions issues arising from the discussion before the Court.      

In admissions parlance, the Supreme Court put affirmative action on a Wait List in the Fisher decision. The Court declined to rule on the merits of the affirmative action program employed by the University of Texas and remanded the case back to a lower court.  What does that mean for the future of affirmative action?  It depends on whom you ask.  As is so often the case these days in American politics, both sides claimed victory.

Several weeks ago, Jocelyn Samuels from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and Catherine Lhamon from the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education sent a joint letter to college and university presidents.  The letter stated that the Fisher decision preserved the legal precedent that colleges have a compelling interest in a diverse student body and can advance that interest through their admissions programs.  The letter also affirmed that a 2011 Guidance on the Voluntary Use of Race to Achieve Diversity in Postsecondary Education statement from the two offices remains in effect, and included a list of Frequently Asked Questions about the Fisher case.

They may be alone in being that optimistic about the future of affirmative action in its present form.  Just yesterday I talked with the Dean of Admissions at a flagship public university who said that he is spending a lot of his time with university lawyers preparing a defense of the institution’s affirmative action program in anticipation that there will be new legal challenges in the wake of Fisher, and an article by Eric Hoover in yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that a number of colleges and universities are thinking about and preparing for a “race neutral” future.

With all due respect, I found the optimism in the letter unwarranted.  The Obama administration (I think it is fair to assume that the letter represents the administration view) is technically correct that the Fisher decision did not overturn affirmative action in its current form, but several justices made it clear in their opinions that they would have done so if asked.  In no way could Fisher have been interpreted as upholding the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, as the letter seems to suggest.  As Richard Kahlenberg points out in an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education, four justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Ginsberg) voted on different sides of the two cases.

At the very least, the Fisher decision places the burden of proof on those who want to use race-conscious approaches to achieve diversity.  Fisher was remanded back to the lower court because it had failed to exercise strict scrutiny, taking at face value the University of Texas’s claim that diversity was a compelling interest and that its affirmative action program (which operated to supplement the diversity produced by the state’s top 10% program) was necessary. Fisher will put the onus on institutions to demonstrate that diversity is a compelling goal, that any affirmative action program is narrowly tailored to achieve the goal, and that no race-neutral solution would be effective.  That’s a subtle, but significant, change.

I also wonder if Fisher will lead to a much-needed conversation about diversity.  I am not suggesting that we need to back away from a commitment to diversity but rather to clarify how and why diversity is important.  Is all diversity equally valuable?  One of the odd arguments made by counsel for the University of Texas during Fisher was that it needed to admit more underachieving middle class and wealthy students of color for the sake of diversity.   

Diversity in higher education has been so worshipped as a virtue that it wouldn’t be surprising to see some university rebrand itself as a 21^st century “Diversity”—think the Diversity of California or Brown Diversity.  But is diversity an intrinsic value, good for its own sake, or an instrumental value, good because it provides and supports a richer educational experience?  I would argue the latter. 

Fisher v. Texas  was the fourth major Supreme Court case dealing with affirmative action in college admissions, and odds are that it won’t be the last.  The issue defies easy solution because it brings into conflict two important fundamental principles. 

One is equality of opportunity.  In August we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  I have watched it multiple times, and I am always struck by two things.  One is how different the world was in 1963, from voting rights issues to segregated lodging facilities and even separate drinking fountains in the South.  The other is King’s genius in alerting the nation to the cognitive dissonance between the promises made in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and the reality of racial discrimination.  We have made great strides, but do we have equality of opportunity today, and can we provide opportunity to higher education in a meaningful way without using racial preferences in admissions?

The other issue is fairness.  If giving preferences on account of race is wrong, isn’t it wrong even when done with noble intentions?  Does the end justify the means?  Is there any alternative?

I am much better at asking questions than I am at providing answers, but two things are clear to me.  It would be a mistake to keep affirmative action in its present form, and it would be a mistake to abolish affirmative action altogether.  By comparison, the current “discussion” between Republicans and Democrats over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown is a walk in the park (but not a National Park).

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Several years ago, at the funeral for University of Virginia Dean of Admissions Jack Blackburn, I ran into Bill Hartog, the long-time Dean of Admissions at Washington and Lee University.  We shared our fond memories of Jack and his legacy for our profession, and commiserated about becoming elder statesmen, or just older.

I shared my experience of attending a meeting of independent school college counselors, including several who had just moved across the desk from the college side.  At the end of the meeting, one of them looked at me and stated how inspiring it was to see the old-timers present.  Thinking he wanted affirmation, I started to reply, “It sure is,” when it hit me that the old-timer he was referring to was me.

Bill observed that he was now 25 years older than the next oldest member of his staff.  He sensed that people in the office were asking, “Who is that old guy, what does he do here, and why is he always so grumpy?”

No one would begrudge Bill for being grumpy this week.  I returned from Toronto on Sunday night to learn that the Washington Post had published an article about colleges that count incomplete applications when computing application totals and admit rate.  The focal point in the article was W&L.  A day later Washington and Lee President Kenneth Ruscio called for an internal review of the school’s procedures for reporting admissions data.   

The original article correctly points out that W&L’s practice is not out-of-line with the accepted guidelines for reporting data to the federal government or as established by the Common Data Set, but there is also an implication that what W&L is doing is comparable to the misrepresentation of admissions stats that occurred at places like Emory and Claremont McKenna and Bucknell.  Based on what I have read and what I know, that is not the case.

I read the article not as an indictment of Washington and Lee but as a criticism of the current state of college admission.  There is a disconnect between the accepted practice within our profession and public understanding of how the admissions process works.  The implicit criticism of W&L was due to counting as completed applications more than 1100 applications that were incomplete, an inclusion that lowered the acceptance rate from 24% to 19%.  That’s common practice, and I don’t consider it unethical, but many of us are guilty of massaging statistics to make us look better.

I also think we have deliberately kept a veil of mystery over how admission works, at least partly because we don’t want the public to know how subjective and imprecise holistic admission can be.  That veil of mystery is a double-edged sword.  It increases public fascination with college admission, but it also leads to skepticism and distrust about our practices and our motives.  As colleges move to a culture driven by marketing, we also send a message that we are motivated by self-interest rather than the public interest.  It is also the case that every instance of misrepresentation at one institution harms all of us.

The larger issue is that we have allowed admissions metrics to become a proxy for institutional quality.  Because educational outcomes are so difficult to measure, we have turned to things that are easy to measure (and easy to manipulate) and assigned them value that is in no way justified.  The unchallenged assumption is that the more popular the institution—application numbers, admit rate, yield—the better it must be.  There are plenty of culprits for that way of thinking—Presidents, Provosts, and Boards; Bond-rating agencies; and of course, U.S. News and World Report, the poster child for measuring educational quality without considering the educational experience.  The logical conclusion of the “Popularity=Quality” mindset is that the ultimate gourmand experience will be found at McDonald’s.

Either Mark Twain or Benjamin Disraeli said that there are three kinds of lies—lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Colleges and universities know better than to spread lies or damned lies, but I think we can expect more scrutiny over our use of statistics. I suspect we will be challenged both by Gen X parents and by the federal government to find new ways to show the value of a college education and the value added by particular institutions.  The Obama administration’s proposal to rank colleges and allocate federal aid based on access, affordability, and outcomes may be the first salvo.  We need to be proactive and not reactive.